Mother Gives Her 3-Year-Old Daughter Alcohol So She Will Grow Up To Be A Good Drinking Partner

A party-loving mother has admitted giving her daughter alcohol from the age of three so that she would be able to 'drink properly' as a teenager.

Doctors have condemned 35-year-old Shannon Burrows after her startling confession that she gave daughter Jamie Lee, now 20, her first taste of alcohol as a small child.

The youngster was drinking cans of Fosters every weekend and had a bottle of vodka to share with a friend to mark her 15th birthday.

By the time she hit the legal drinking age of 18, she was able to hit the town and match her mother drink for drink until 4am.

Mother Shannon said: 'We love getting drunk together, if she loses control, I look after her and vice versa. 'We are like best mates. We have a great time'

But GP Dr Sarah Jarvis warned children should not drink alcohol and warned that drinking from an early age may have damaged Jamie Lee's health.

She warned that drinking alcohol may have damaged her daughter's brain development, long-term memory and liver.

According to the doctor, she may have developed a psychological addiction to alcohol.

Shannon, from Doncaster, South Yorkshire, pays for her heavy drinking partly with money earned by her landscape gardener husband John, 50, and her £180 per month child benefit.

Husband John looks after their other children - two sons aged 12 and a daughter of nine - while she goes out drinking with unemployed Jamie Lee once a week.

Shannon told Closer magazine she wanted her daughter to drink 'properly' so that she would have a 'party buddy' when her daughter reached legal drinking age.

She said that she knew Jamie Lee would go out and get wasted on her 18th birthday if she had no experience of drinking alcohol before hand.

She revealed that, after getting drunk together, the pair nurse their hangovers together and share a fry-up.

Shannon said that although she knows that some people will disapprove of her attitude towards alcohol, she says that her parenting skills have never been criticised by friends and that she knows what is best for her children.

Shannon started drinking herself at 14 and would often get so drunk that she collapsed in the street.

On some occasions she had to be taken home by police. The mother said that she does not worry about her daughter's health because teenagers are 'resilient'.

Jamie Lee has been unemployed since leaving her job at a clothes shop six months ago. She says that she is grateful that her mother built up her resistance to alcohol.

But Dr Jarvis, a clinical consultant with the website patient.co.uk, said that drinking at a young age did not build up a person's tolerance to alcohol.

She told Closer magazine that early drinking just allows the body to take in more alcohol.

According to Dr Jarvis, Jamie Lee will now have to drink more in order to feel the same effects. She recommended that women drink no more than three units of alcohol in one sitting.